Love Is Understanding: The Life and Times of Peter Tork and The Monkees

By Sergio Farias

Between 1966 and 1967, "the Monkees sold more records than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined!" Whether this is true or not, they had a revolutionary TV series and they raised the bar of rock concerts. As songwriters and musicians, their musical diversity ranged from the pioneering use of the banjo and the Moog synthesizer in pop music to becoming one of the forerunners in the creation of country rock. This creative unity won admirers like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and Timothy Leary. However, when they  exposed the modus operandi of the American record industry, they paid the consequences, and public opinion designated the Monkees as just a prefabricated group at the height of the counterculture. After the band broke up, its members were relegated to brutal ostracism. Peter Tork was the most affected. Though he was a scholar, a classical musician capable of playing seven musical instruments, and an excellent actor and songwriter, for some Peter was simply "the dummy." This book seeks to do justice to the Monkees' extraordinary legacy in pop culture, revealing the ups and downs of the band's backstory and tracing Peter's dramatic trajectory and pilgrimage through life. A true rock and roll survivor, but, above all, a brilliant artist.

"Sergio Farias delves into the history of the Monkees, a band that lived through the glory and disgrace of stardom after coming face to face with the record industry." O Globo.

"This book fills an existing gap regarding the history of the Monkees" Folha de São Paulo.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BearManor Media
• Release date: Jun 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201572471

Book preview

Chapter 1

Peter Hurts Himself

¹

It just wasn’t worth it.

Peter

El Paso, Texas. January 31, 1972.

Peter Tork, who had been one of rock and roll’s biggest stars, was just another face in the line at U.S. customs. He was on his way back from Ciudad Juárez.

Five years earlier, his former band, the Monkees, had sold more records than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined, but now, in a world full of glam, heavy metal, and progressive rock, it was only a nostalgic memory. Reruns of The Monkees TV series still played on repeat, but it was during the less popular Saturday morning time slot. The benefit of these remnants of popularity would come only much later. Meanwhile, the old hits like Last Train to Clarksville or Daydream Believer were restricted to the throwback hour on radio stations, and their records were out of print with the exception of a few greatest hits compilations. To make matters worse, the fierce effort of music critics ended up successfully labeling them as a disposable boy band even though they had essentially revolutionized pop music.

As for Peter, like many people of his generation, he plunged headlong into the world of drugs for the sake of a spiritual transformation. This transformation would take place within the framework of a new society of flowers, peace, and love, but this society never ended up materializing. His frustrations, both with flower power and with his obscurity, found a conscious and unconscious outlet in increased use of alcohol and narcotics.

He had already lost his fortune and was struggling to push his musical career in a new direction. His activities were isolated to performances in small clubs or recording sessions with little-known artists. Here he was wandering around a foreign city during one of the most profitable times in American show business—an act that epitomized this bazaar stage of his life.

At the time, Ciudad Juárez, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, had four hundred thousand inhabitants, most of whom made their living in the manufacturing industry. Founded by Spanish explorers in the seventeenth century, it was not without its historical charm, but it wasn’t exactly a tourist destination either. Connected to El Paso by a bridge of less than one thousand feet, over the aptly named Rio Bravo (angry river), Juárez had become an important place for American immigration officials. This was largely due to the drug trade, which the Juárez Cartel was taking over at the time. Two decades later the city would be listed as one of the most violent in the world.

Observant customs officials obviously targeted the young people who made this crossing, especially if they fell into the hippie stereotype, i.e. bell-bottoms, shirts inspired by styles from India, long hair, thick beards. And Peter fit this description.

On top of all that, upon returning to his country and his home in California, he forgot a small bag of hash in his jacket pocket. He got snatched up like a hare in a fox den, and there was no leniency on account of his artistic temperament.

Despite the quantity, which amounted to the meager worth of three dollars, Peter Halsten Thorkelson, the twenty-nine-year-old divorcee and father of a two-year-old daughter, could potentially be apprehended on the charge of international drug trafficking. What’s more, he’d be subjected to the laws of Texas, a state known for locking up drug traffickers and throwing away the key.

At the height of Monkeemania, many police officers, who served as the band’s bodyguards, had frequently requested autographs for family and friends. Now, members of that same brotherhood were asking for the musician/actor’s autograph, only this time for the purposes of sending him off to a federal penitentiary.

¹Part of title of Peter Tork song.

Chapter 2

Run Away From Life

"I knew I had something

inside me want to get out."

Peter

It is said that the first Thorkelsons came from Norway to the United States in 1872, settling in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Generations later, John Halsten Thorkelson was born in Madison, Wisconsin on May 3, 1917.

In 1940, already a professor of economics, John married Virginia Hope Straus, whom he had met in college. Virginia, a descendant of Irish and German Jewish immigrants, was born in New York on January 9, 1920. She was majoring in literature at the time of their marriage. From this union Peter Halsten Thorkelson was born in the final minutes of Friday, February 13, 1942 at the then modern Doctors’ Hospital in Washington D.C., where his father worked as a civil servant for the Department of Agriculture. Over the next decade the couple would have three more children: Nicholas, Christopher, and Ann Elizabeth.

When Peter came into this world, it was the height of World War II, but American show business was going strong. Frenzies of fans were buying up Frank Sinatra’s most recent record, Night and Day.² Cinema and radio were the leading forms of entertainment even though television, after fifteen years of testing, was beginning to run its first national broadcast through NBC. But with industrial production focused on the war effort, the manufacture of TV sets had been put on hold, not to mention the prohibitive six-hundred-dollar cost of the gadget. This was in a country where the average worker lived, reasonably well, on 1,492 dollars per year.

In 1943, due to John’s job offers, the Thorkelson family completed the first of their relocations, to the cities of Detroit and Badger, along with the usual holidays to New York and Long Island.

The war ended with the surrender of the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the explosion of two atomic bombs. With part of the world devastated, John, with the rank of lieutenant in the victorious United States army, moved his family to Germany. His mission was to assist in the process of withdrawing American troops and to help find shelter for the many who’d been left without homes. It was the first time Peter would appear, along with his family, as a character in a newspaper story. The Detroit Free Press published, Mother takes two children to destroyed Germany. The Thorkelsons stayed in Berlin for two years. While Peter was enrolled in a German school for the children of American officers, a man named Hans Derich acted as his chauffeur. Hans did not speak English, which encouraged little Peter to develop a quick command of German, in addition to the French he was learning at school. Along with his dog, a boxer named Addie, and Ule, his first best friend who was German, Peter had vivid memories of the rubble left by the bombs: I remember Germany well. There were rows of houses and streets burned and destroyed.

It was in this devastated European country that Peter had his first vocational impulses: When I was little I wanted to be an orchestra conductor. I remember a time when I was in Germany, I was about four-years-old, we went to a restaurant where they had an orchestra and the leader let me get up and conduct it.

After the trauma left by the horrors of two world wars (1914– 1918 and 1939–1945), a thirty-year economic boom would occur in capitalist countries, with increased consumption, higher standards of living, and many technological advances. The social, cultural, and political effects suggested that everyone had learned from the disasters; perhaps the world would no longer be governed by violence.

Emerging in New York as a result of this same postwar period, the beatniks would begin criticizing consumer culture. Members of the social movement subscribed to a nonconformist lifestyle, which would soon become influential to the youth at that time.

During 1948, John and his family left Germany, whose industries were undergoing a period of reconstruction thanks to substantial American investment. In the United States, the Thorkelsons settled in Madison, where John began his doctoral studies in economics. By 1950 he’d already earned his PhD and the family moved to Mansfield, Connecticut, which was a city with less than ten thousand inhabitants at the time. At the University of Connecticut, John gave classes while Virginia finished her degree. They acquired the Fletcher-Fenner homestead on 614 Wormwood Hill Road, which had been built in 1755 by the wealthy investor John Fletcher. The two-story wooden house had twelve rooms and was nestled in almost forty acres of forested land.

Peter never quite got used to these constant changes. This was perhaps reflected by his poor academic performance. As he would later reveal, he was an unhappy child with a strong inferiority complex: […] Middle class, seemingly together home, and no discussion of anything wrong was allowed basically. And the result is that everything that’s wrong with the way I came to when I grew up and came to light, everything that’s wrong with that is compounded by the fact that I have, or had, no way to talk about it. I did not suffer major physical abuse in my household, I got spanked once or twice when I was small, that’s it. Not massive abuse by anybody’s standards. I was not yelled at. But what did happen for me was that, that my parents, I think they, I was okay, as long as I was just a generic kid. […] There never was a time when I couldn’t drink. I was always allowed to have wine at the, you know, with the parents. And as far as I know I was able to drink a little if that’s what I wanted at four.³

Early consumption of alcoholic beverages would have its consequences for Peter’s future, but his challenges at school seem most prevalent at that stage in his life. To stay on pace with the German curriculum, he ended up enrolling in the American school a year earlier than most children. I was constantly trying to make friends and trying to be funny but never succeeding because I was so much younger.Things started to change at the age of nine³when Peter started studying classical piano and composers like Prokofiev, Bach, Rachmaninoff, and Stravinsky. His long fingers would give him an advantage.

Peter’s newfound passion for music, however, did not overcome his desirefor paternal attention. At the time his father was focused on writing the academic essay Union Education Programs, 1941-1953, volumes 1 & 2, a thousand-page tome, which, considering the anti-communist paranoia at the time, could be labeled as a very progressive work. This time period was marked by McCarthyism, a term coined to criticize Senator Joseph McCarthy for his relentless ideological persecution. On his blacklist were names like Charles Chaplin, who was forced into self-exile in Europe for his alleged un-American activities.

The winners of World War II divided the planet in half: on the one side was the United States and its allies,⁴ who lived in a thriving economy; and, on the other, the Soviet Union with its dictatorship of the proletariat, which promised political power to the working class. The dispute between capitalism and communism started to generate a series of conflicts—a successful socialist revolution had occurred in China, one was underway in Korea, and another was just getting started in Cuba. With the nuclear capabilities of the two antagonistic superpowers, the risk of conflict became imminent, thus began what became known as the Cold War.

Aside from politics, there was the entertainment industry, and TV was entering its golden age. With devices now costing less than one hundred dollars, they were present in more than ten million households. TV became popular, attracting audiences with everything from live variety shows to the first hit TV series, the comedy I Love Lucy starring Lucille Ball. In the world of music, Frank Sinatra had fallen in popularity, due to a media campaign that linked him to mobsters. The criticisms also dealt with his artistic association with conductor Mitch Miller,⁵ considered by some critics as too commercial. When Sinatra reemerged as an old man of forty in the middle of 1955, the moment was different, and much more … commercial.

Rhythm and blues, the sensual genre from the black urban community, was becoming popular among young, white country and western fans. With the arrival of the electric guitar on the pop scene, the white singer and guitarist Bill Haley was having success singing and playing like black artists. From that melting pot sprung (We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock, which served as the theme song for the feature film Blackboard Jungle, an impressive drama about juvenile delinquency. The film helped the record become a phenomenon. It sold six million copies, anointing Bill Haley as the first international rock and roll star. In a country that enforced racial segregation, an important barrier had been broken.

Both critics and churchgoers had an extremely negative reaction to rock and roll. They considered it artistically banal, and harmful to the youth. The profit-minded industry saw the wayward youth as a new consumer market. The world transformed from black and white to color. Young people started to buy rock and roll records and, for the first time, to dress and act differently from their parents, daring to wear tight jeans and knee-length skirts. They hung out at the brand new fast-food chains and read en masse the new Playboy magazine. It’s easy to see why rock and roll invaded the charts, with its first wave of stars like Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly & The Crickets, and one former Mississippi truck driver—Elvis Presley.

At twenty-one years of age, Elvis was innovative, bold, sensual, and had a voice similar to that of the best black singers. With a stroke of genius, his manager, Colonel Tom Parker,⁶ took note of TV’s limitations. He had noticed that, on the popular Ed Sullivan Show, Elvis had been filmed only from the waist up because his rolling hips were considered immoral. Cinema was the way around that. The feature film Love Me Tender was one of the biggest box office hits of the year, solidifying Elvis’s global stardom. At the end of 1956, VarietyMagazine stated, Elvis a millionaire in 1 year. Elvis was filling concerts halls and movie theaters, and selling millions of records, which was an unprecedented phenomenon. He purchased the incredible Graceland mansion, where he placed four Cadillacs in the garage. Rock and roll had displayed its power.

Peter the teenager was awakened by this new rhythm: "My parents only put on classical or folk records at home, like those of the group the Weavers.⁷ That’s when Little Richard and Fats Domino came onto the scene, combining blues and soul with rock and roll. For me it was a magical moment in pop music.Along with his generation, Peter was awestruck by Elvis, whose hits Don’t Be Cruel, All Shook Up, Hound Dog, and I Want You, I Need You, I Love You" became some of his favorites.

The previously unhappy and insecure child became a self-confident teenager: I was a punk […] I wanted people to love and admire me for my gentle wit, my talented music-making and my beauty of personality. Instead I was loathsome and irritating and quarrelsome, and I didn’t know why people didn’t like me.He started doing all kinds of things: he contributed to the school newspaper by writing texts for the comic strips, which were illustrated by his brother Nick, he participated on baseball and football teams, and he joined the University of Connecticut orchestra in which he played the tumba.

Unlike many other future rockers of his generation, Peter didn’t have a school rock and roll band on his résumé. Instead, he gave piano recitals, such as Bach’s Minuet in G major.

Nor was he a wayward young man with a leather jacket and sideburns who would borrow his parents’ car without asking and speed down the streets with his drinking and philandering posse. As he would later say, In the city where I grew up, there were barely any cars, much less one for a teenager to go out driving. The most transgressive thing I did was think about how to get out of there.

As an actor, he debuted in a school production of the play Our Town.⁸ His biggest influence in the field of the performing arts was comedian Danny Kaye. Peter turned into a fan when he saw (he must have desired his fate) the film The Court Jester (1956). His kaleidoscope of activities started to gain direction when, in 1956, broadcaster, singer, and composer Tom Glazer,⁹ a friend of the Thorkelson family, gave Peter a ukulele. Glazer had a deep knowledge of American folk music. His lyrics, though humorous, considered social issues, and Glazer had a great influence on the teenage Peter. Thus, he started to play guitar and banjo and became interested in the folk songs of Pete Seeger and in bluesman Robert Johnson.

Around this time Peter acquired his first banjo, which seemed to become his preferred instrument.

While Peter immersed himself in folk music in 1959, rock and roll was suffering major misfortunes: Elvis was serving in the army in Europe; Buddy Holly had died in a plane crash; Little Richard became a preacher; and Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis were involved in extramarital scandals. Besides that, Variety pointed out that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) had created the Grammy, but no rock and roll artists had been given the award during its first year, even though Elvis was responsible for half of RCA Records’ profits.

New faces appeared on the American pop music scene, like Frankie Avalon, a romantic singer who starred in innocent musical comedies known as beach party movies, and Chubby Checker, who was crowned King of Twist, a dance that would invade the world. At first, Peter wasn’t interested in the pop music of the time, except for Ray Charles, who burst out with the single and soonto-be rhythm and blues classic What’d I Say.

In September 1959 Steve Pope was Peter’s classmate in the English literature course at Carleton University in Minnesota. He described Peter like this: In his apartment there were banjos and guitars hanging on the wall, and one of the reasons I liked going there was because Peter spent all night playing music, drinking, and talking about politics and philosophy.

Instead of books, musical instruments accumulated in Peter’s room, and he ended up failing the course. Peter, who once triumphed over two thousand students as a math Olympiad, was making his father furious. John Thorkelson told his son to look for a job. Thus ended the meandering 1950s, with great uncertainties for Peter, for rock and roll, and for the world, which struggled in the depths of the Cold War.

In distant Brazil, the radio transmitted the euphoria from the World Cup victory since there still weren’t any national television networks. TV Tupi came the closest to this concept, bringing together a few affiliates to broadcast one of the first Brazilian series (Alô, doçura!), which was inspired by I Love Lucy. Rock and roll, even though it was considered the rhythm of delinquents, penetrated Brazilian charts. What’s interesting is that, at a time when the dream of female emancipation still didn’t exist in Brazil, the first national rock star was a woman—Celly Campell with her version of Stupid Cupid (Estúpido Cupido). But the big hit in Brazil, at the end of that decade, was Chega de saudade, which was sung by João Gilberto (who also played guitar) and composed by Antonio Carlos Jobim. Its sophisticated rhythm, derived from samba and influenced by jazz, was called bossa nova. This new style transcended borders, eventually bringing both artists to United States.

During the year 1960, Peter’s family threatened to cut him off financially, and he tried to focus on his studies, but his obsession with girls, music, and parties led him to another failure. With his family no longer protecting him, in 1961 he found a job at the American Thread Company, a textile factory in Connecticut. Contrary to what one might expect from a papa’s boy, Peter loved this phase of independence. Despite the harsh working conditions, his older colleagues adopted Peter as their mascot, including him in an assortment of alcohol-fueled get-togethers. A year later, he returned to the university, where he did well initially. He even participated in extracurricular activities, working as a broadcaster on a program about folk music and also starring in the comedy The Love Potion, an 8mm short, in color. In the film, Peter, rejected by his love, finds a magic potion to get her back, but the potion ends up falling into the wrong hands. The Love Potion, directed by one of his colleagues,¹⁰ circulated within the university.

Since Peter continued to pursue his bohemian existence, a third failure was imminent, but he was already tired of it all: The problem kept repeating itself and I didn’t care anymore. Something inside me knew I wanted to make music. I didn’t want anything more to do with the university. That was when, in March 1963, he decided to go to Manhattan.

He stayed at the apartment of his grandmother, Mrs. Catharine McGuire Straus, who lived on 57th Street, on the West Side. According to her, Peter, although shy, went out with several girls and frequently fell in love. He got a job as an office boy at a talent agency. Since his grandmother wouldn’t accept any financial contribution, Peter started saving a small amount of money.

After getting a gig as a banjo tuner in a bar in Greenwich Village, Peter had an insight: Once I got on a stage [ . . . ] I knew I had to be some kind of entertainer. I loved it!While living with his grandmother, he saved enough money for him and two friends to rent a small apartment on Bedford Street. Even though the place had no hot water and its decorations were bought at garage sales or donated by the Salvation Army, the expensive ninety-dollar-permonth rent forced Peter to make extra money writing arrangements for other musicians in the Village. Despite these difficulties, he had always looked back fondly on this time in his life: [T]he beautiful thing about the Village was that it didn’t take much money to live comfortably there. There was a strong community sense among the Beatniks. [ . . . ] I was always being offered a new shirt, or a pair of boots or a meal.

Only a short time ago Bob Dylan had emerged in that same Greenwich Village community. This young man would go on to establish himself as one of the greatest composers of the new generation. His second single, Blowin’ in the Wind, didn’t even make the charts, but alternate versions turned it into a hit. Artists like Peter, Paul and Mary and the Kingston Trio recorded cover versions of the song, and folk music entered into its golden age. Blowin’ in the Wind by Bob Dylan became more than a success; it served as an anthem among protest songs, raising important questions about peace, war, and freedom.

Peter, who was a charismatic multi-instrumentalist, immersed himself in this folk wave. He simplified his last name to Tork, but he was best known as the good people guy. Initially, he became an opener for local artists, such as the blind Puerto Rican guitarist named José Feliciano.¹¹ He [Peter] was a real nice guy, easy going, sincere and a very good musician.

Since Peter accepted any opportunity that presented itself, even if it paid only with a plate of food, he passed the hat and was able to make an extra five dollars a week—at a time when a box of cereal cost twenty-six cents. He made the most of this opportunity with a good sense of humor: "Ladies and Gentlemen [sic], as you know, folk singers are very badly paid and have to rely on contributions from the audience. [. . . .] In a minute or two I will pass it [the banjo] around and ask you to drop money in it. The metal money will go clink and the paper money will go swish. If yours goes swish everyone here will know what a music lover and expert you are.’"

Soon he was a regular figure in bars like Cyclops, The Pad, Abdo’s, and The Playhouse Cafe, where he debuted as a songwriter, partnering up with his brother Nick (Nicholas) for two humorous songs: Alvin and Under The Undertaker. This busy schedule didn’t exactly convert to money in the pocket: We continued to go hungry, but we were very happy.

It was in one of these Greenwich Village bars, the Four Winds Cafe, where Peter fell in love at first sight with a sixteen-year-old girl who asked him for a cigarette. It was Jody Babb, one of the waitresses at the bar. She had left the house of her mother, who had divorced her father, and pursued her destiny in that bohemian New York neighborhood with an unflinching disposition and sarcastic humor. Peter and Jody began living together and were never apart.

Things started to get better. Peter secured a brief stint for the hefty sum of fifty dollars at the Charly Bates nightclub on the chic East Side. After that gig he passed through almost every nightclub in the city, performing with the group the Realists who accompanied the singer Casey Anderson, or as part of a trio with the musician Bruce Farwell, and the teen singer Carol Hunter,¹² appearing as Tork & Farwell plus one.

During Christmas 1963, Peter accompanied his grandmother on a trip to Venezuela, where his father, then a renowned academic, was working on an economic development plan at the request of the government. He ended up staying six weeks, exploring the Andes and the Spanish language. Upon returning to New York, he witnessed something unusual, something that would cause another revolution in his life and in the world.

When, on February 7, 1964, the Beatles boarded their plane, amongst fan hysteria, at the London Heathrow Airport to embark on their first tour of the United States, they did not know it, but Beatlemania had already dominated American hearts and minds. No wonder: their latest single I Want to Hold Your Hand was selling ten thousand copies a day in New York alone. Their first performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, on February 9, brought the country to a standstill. With about seventy-four million viewers from coast to coast, it was the largest audience in television history at the time. It’s said that even the crime rate went down during that show. What’s more, Peter’s three future bandmates were witnessing that epic moment.

Davy Jones also performed on The Ed Sullivan Show with the cast of Oliver! Born in Manchester, England on December 30, 1945, he was one of five children, the son of a railway engineer and an amateur musician. At the age of fourteen, Davy began his career as an actor in the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. After the death of his mother, a heavy smoker who succumbed to pulmonary emphysema, he began training to become a professional jockey, a career fostered by his father and facilitated by his height of fivefeet-three inches. But Davy was born for the limelight. Since he also sang, he was selected to star in the musical Oliver! in London. At the end of 1962, he traveled to the United States for a season of the musical on Broadway. Backstage during The Ed Sullivan Show, upon seeing the Beatles, Davy thought, That is something!

Mike Nesmith and his fiancée Phyllis were in San Antonio, Texas at the home of a blind professor, to give a reading, but they didn’t take their eyes off the television where the Beatles were appearing. Born in Dallas on December 30, 1942, Mike was the only son of the couple Warren and Bette Nesmith. The marriage ended soon after Warren’s service in World War II. Bette, a devoted follower of Christian Science with a strong personality, would experience serious difficulties, but eventually found a job as a typist. Since she had no experience, her mistakes were constant and, in order to correct them, she had the idea of inventing a concealer, in the form of paint. The product gained popularity and Bette patented the formula and began producing it in her small kitchen. In 1956 Liquid Paper was founded. At the time it provided her with extra income, but, in twelve years, it would make her a millionaire. Before that, however, when she was still a mother in a difficult situation, Bette worried about Mike’s behavioral issues at school. As a teenager he started to become interested in theater and black music, especially that of rock and roll artists. At the age of eighteen, his mother sent him to serve in the Air Force to tame his disposition. He emerged as a protest singer and songwriter. Back in San Antonio in 1963, Mike composed for local artists and released his first vinyl, Wanderin’, through a tiny label named Highness.

Micky Dolenz and his friends were on the West Coast, in Los Angeles. At the age of eleven, he had been the star of two seasons of the NBCTV series Circus Boy (1956).¹³ Thanks to his mother’s astute money management, Micky had a Pontiac Grand Prix with a mini-television on board where he watched the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. He said to his friends, I want to be in a band like that. One of four children of the late actor George Dolenz (1908– 1963) and actress Janelle Johnson,¹⁴ Micky was born in Los Angeles on March 8, 1945. He grew up in the heart of the Hollywood artistic community. At the time of The Ed Sullivan Show, hehad just started his music career as a vocalist (and eventually guitar player) in a band ironically called the Missing Links, and the Beatles were of course part of the repertoire.

The Beatles themselves had traveled a long and winding path, from school ballrooms in Liverpool to being managed by Brian Epstein, who trained them and got them a contract with the powerful EMI. When they first appeared on the pop market in 1962, they were unlike anything anyone had seen. Everything was new: from their long hair and bangs to their American rhythm and blues-influenced music, which, combined with the British accent, gave them a unique sound; along with the fact that they wrote their own songs. The Beatles had become a smash hit in the United States. Their concerts provoked unprecedented hysteria, and they were on almost every magazine cover in the country.

The music industry was feeling the impact of Beatlemania. Until then, that kind of mass popularity was hard to come by. The first record to sell one million copies, Vesti La Giubba (1902) by baritone Enrico Caruso, was an exception. And multimillion-dollar releases—such as White Christmas (1942) by Bing Crosby and (We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock (1955) by Bill Haley & His Comets or It’s Now or Never (1960) by Elvis Presley—were rare phenomena. Before the Beatles, if a record sold four hundred thousand copies in the U.S., it could already be considered a hit. The market was changing, so much so that in 1958 the American music industry started to classify albums that sold five hundred thousand copies and singles that sold one million copies as gold records¹⁵ (in Great Britain sixty thousand albums or two hundred thousand singles sold earned the distinction of silver record). The single I Want to Hold Your Hand sold over nine million copies over the course of the year. On the April 1964 music charts, Beatles’ singles occupied the top five spots, and their songs were even being re-recorded by philharmonics.

The Beatles spurred another change in the music scene: young consumers, who had previously been more focused on singles, were beginning to appreciate albums. Meet The Beatles, the band’s first album released in the United States, sold more than four million copies in just six months. Practically overnight, sales of singles between $0.79 to $0.99 ceased to drive business in the American recording industry. Albums with prices between $3.98 (mono) and $4.98 (stereo) took their place.

The Beatles, with their unparalleled record sales, and the genius their fans attributed to them, came to be called the Fabs (from the word fabulous).

If in the past British musicians were less likely to achieve substantial success in American territory, the Beatles’ phenomenon turned British nationality into a credential for success. Soon, radio stations were flooded with what became known as the British invasion, a humorous term used as retaliation for Great Britain’s lost economic control of its colony. Along with the Beatles, dominating the American charts were the British Rolling Stones, Dave Clark Five, Animals, Searchers, Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, Gerry & the Pacemakers, Manfred Mann, Freddie & the Dreamers, Zombies, Wayne